Reflections: Dropping the Stones

On a soul level there is an inner reckoning that takes place during the holidays.   Regardless of whether or not we honor the process, the season grants a pause of contemplation in which we take stock.  Specific to this is a measure of our year’s gains, and too a more sullen depth awareness of losses or sacrifices that may have been at stake.  We quietly account, if we take the pause to consider within.  This is part of the human rhythm which inter-webs us all,  and natural as the flux of the seasons or regularity of the here-then-gone-again moon.

This year’s reflection seemed to have repeated expression, or in other words, a theme.  What I heard again and again was the same.  From family or strangers, clients or friends came expressions of helplessness, apathy, feeling sad.  A specific anxiety and exhaustion that I recognized as being related distinctly to grief.  All around me people were aware of their struggles.  As said, this is what the soul does, runs us through and sweeps us along in collective fluent tides, at certain times more so than others.  It’s one of life’s mysterious ways of seeing to it that we remain connected to one another from a place that starts within.

Now, here’s what’s most interesting.  Again and again people used the same metaphor in their language to talk about these feelings.  From Maryland where I traveled for Christmas to Santa Barbara where I attend school, from Connecticut where my best friend, a teacher, was dealing with fallout in the community of Newtown so close it’s within the district where she lives, I kept hearing the same thing.  All these people spoke of their emotions as feeling like stones.

This struck me particularly when, over New Years, I got sick.  The following day, in my own physically weary and vulnerable state, I found my self telling a friend and colleague about a confusing experience my heart seemed to be learning and relearning.  Mostly what I found myself sharing was my exasperation over reliving the same aggravating lesson.   This woman, Massie Parsadayan, is a Christian philosopher.  She told me I needed to let go of the  stone lodged within.  I listened to this symbolic talk respectfully, though without response, only to absolutely freak out  during our next professional meeting.  We were together to do soul work by studying a Christian text of her choice.  This particular text claimed many people who are in states of  sadness or darkness are experiencing bitterness, and it is that quality that makes us feel powerless, or like victims.  It is bitterness which actually keeps us from healing or growth.  Sure, sure, I found myself thinking.  Bitterness, sure, I get it.  Poor bitter people trapped by their own hardness, I really felt for them.  The text then listed the dictionary definition of bitterness, as I will here:

(taken from https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Bitterness)